


A Witch's Goodness

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [39]
Category: Original Work
Genre: 1800s-era Tech, Cute, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Falling In Love, Flash Fic, Good and Evil, Head Injury, LGBTQ Character, Lesbian Character, Magic, Microfic, Mild Blood, Original Character(s), Originally Posted Elsewhere, POV First Person, Pre-Relationship, Princes & Princesses, Royalty, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: We are all, as humans, called to determine the kind of love we will transmit into the world, no?***Taaron Miphariin was indeed a witch, but whether or not she was a good person? That's another story entirely.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [39]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Kudos: 5





	A Witch's Goodness

**Author's Note:**

> This is a version of the original Twitterfic, same title, posted over at my now-deactivated personal account in March 2020. It has been given minor edits for consistency with other stories and readability on AO3. ❤️
> 
>  **SUGGESTED RE-READING:** This one takes place _before_ ["The Bear's Last Princess"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23375779) and ["The Hero Taaron Miphariin."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23417980) The Taaron and Kirra stories start jumping around a LOT after this, and I apologize. I'll try to keep them on track for you.
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

There has much talk about the witch Taaron Miphariin lately—you may have heard it, listeners, and reacted with as much consternation as is necessary whenever your fellow historians start speculating on morality.

Was Miphariin a ‘good’ person? A ‘bad’ person?

The debate rages on—oh, but she did this, she did that—but witches must follow the Old Law—but she moved beyond the Law—after all, she stole this power from that royal—

__

What, have we become arbiters of decency? We are only arbiters of the truth, we Varyans.

Let me tell you a story: 

Before Taaron Miphariin discovered her power, when she and the witch-heir Kirra Lattar were just sixteen, they went dancing. Nowhere important, mind you, not at some function or another, but on the side of the little-used road that led to deep into the True Witchwood. Kirra, as it turned out, wanted to show Taaron off in public—even if it meant by a muddy path through the woods that only the constables traveled.

So they danced. Or rather, Kirra attempted to teach Taaron how to dance. While Kirra was no good at it by her own admission, she liked the closeness it allowed the two of them. 

Had you been there, you might have heard disjointed conversation:

“Are you going to tell your uncle?—Hey! You can’t step left there, silly. You have to step right—”

“My right or your right?—I don’t know, Kirra.”

(Taaron Miphariin, at the time, had decided to be a witch. She also, sadly, had not yet decided to stop being a silversmith.)

Said Kirra, “Do you want me to be there when you talk to…”

The dancing stopped. Kirra held her head and closed her eyes, pulling away. Since birth, irregular spells of dizziness and vertigo had often overtaken her. She stepped back from Taaron—

And stumbled down the steep bank behind them.

At the bottom of the bank Taaron found her friend face down against the wet, nasty layer of dead leaves that plastered the ground. With much effort, her heart pounding, she flipped Kirra onto her back.  
Blood seeped from the witch-heir’s nose and forehead—she had hurt herself on something. She did not move. Her eyes were closed. But she was breathing.

Panic seeped its way into Taaron’s veins. And for those who continue to argue about Taaron Miphariin’s goodness or badness, rather than her personhood, allow me to say:

Because she couldn’t carry Kirra to safety, Taaron knew she had two choices. 

She could risk waiting for Kirra to awaken, and be there when she awoke—something that felt very, very important to Taaron in that moment. So important that she would have done almost anything to accomplish it.

She could also flee down the road into Kar Tor and find immediate help. That had no risk at all, except she would not be the first thing Kirra saw when she recovered, and no one (in her mind) would consider her much of a hero. 

And the Old Law, which every witch intuitively feels even if they do not know of it or of witchcraft itself—that Law did not help Taaron whatsoever at that moment.

So the true debate, Varyans, is not whether or not she was good, but whether or not she was a person. In this case, Taaron had to choose between two very different kinds of love. We do not know which she picked. That decision (for now!) has been lost to us. But she did have to make a decision.

We are all, as humans, called to determine the kind of love we will transmit into the world, no?

So, if you ask this historian’s opinion: Taaron Miphariin was a person. That is enough. Her story is worth retelling.

Now let these debates end.

**Author's Note:**

> Please be sure to leave a comment or a kudos or bookmark the piece if you enjoyed it! ❤️
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** Taaron becomes not the greatest person later in her life. (That's not a spoiler: we see it in "Unseen, Like The Wind" and "The True History of True Sight.") But even the beastliest folks were once young and awkward and in love.


End file.
